Cyrillic to Latin Converter for Bulgarian (Official Rules)
Cyrillic to Latin conversion rewrites Cyrillic text in Latin letters. For Bulgarian, the official method is the Streamlined System of the 2009 Transliteration Act (щ = sht, ъ = a, word-final -ия = ia), adopted by BGN/PCGN in 2013. ISO 9 and scientific transliteration use diacritics instead and are mainly for libraries and linguists.
Cyrillic to Latin conversion means rewriting text from the Cyrillic alphabet in Latin letters. For Bulgarian there is one official answer, the Streamlined System from Bulgaria’s 2009 Transliteration Act, but several other systems are still in use. The converter above follows the official system; this page explains when the others matter.
One point first: “Cyrillic” is a script shared by many languages, and each one romanizes it differently. The same letter щ becomes sht from Bulgarian, shch from Russian and Ukrainian. If you are converting Bulgarian, use a Bulgarian table. The Cyrillic alphabet page covers the wider family.
Cyrillic to Latin for Bulgarian: the official system
Bulgaria’s Transliteration Act was published in the State Gazette on 13 March 2009. It applies to official documents such as passports and driving licences, to maps and to street and town signs. Bulgaria described the system in a paper for the 2012 UN conference on geographical names, which endorsed it, and the British and American naming authorities (BGN/PCGN) adopted it in 2013, so English-language maps now use the same spellings as Bulgaria.
Its design goal is simple: plain ASCII letters that an English reader can say. Ж becomes zh, ч ch, ш sh, and ъ a plain a. Two extra rules apply: word-final -ия is written -ia (Sofia), and the country name is always Bulgaria. The full letter table is on the Bulgarian transliteration page.
Comparing Cyrillic to Latin systems
Every Cyrillic to Latin system for Bulgarian agrees on most letters: а is a, б is b, м is m. The differences sit in about eleven letters, shown below.
| Cyrillic | Streamlined (official) | ISO 9:1995 | Scientific |
|---|---|---|---|
| ж | zh | ž | ž |
| й | y | j | j |
| х | h | h | ch / x |
| ц | ts | c | c |
| ч | ch | č | č |
| ш | sh | š | š |
| щ | sht | ŝ | št |
| ъ | a | ʺ | ă |
| ь | y | ʹ | ʹ |
| ю | yu | û | ju |
| я | ya | â | ja |
Streamlined System
Official in Bulgaria and used by BGN/PCGN and the UN. No diacritics, easy to type, good for names and signs. The cost is ambiguity: a can be а or ъ, and y can be й or ь, so you cannot always reverse it.
ISO 9
The international standard ISO 9:1995 gives each Cyrillic letter exactly one Latin character, often with a diacritic: щ is ŝ, я is â, ъ is a double prime ʺ. Because the mapping is one-to-one, a computer can convert ISO 9 text back to Cyrillic without errors. It covers many Cyrillic languages with one table, which suits libraries and databases, but it is hard to read aloud.
Scientific transliteration
Slavic linguists have long used a system with háček letters: ž, č, š, and ă for ъ. Bulgaria once made a version of it a state standard (BDS 1596:1973). You will still meet it in linguistics journals and older academic books on Bulgarian.
Older English spellings
Before 2009 you will find mixed spellings in books and on maps: Turnovo or Tirnovo for Търново, c or tz for ц. These are not wrong historically, but the current standard is Tarnovo.
Same words, different systems
This table shows how a few words look in each system. Notice how the official form drops diacritics and how ISO 9 keeps one symbol per letter.
| Bulgarian | Streamlined | Scientific | ISO 9 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Търново | Tarnovo | Tărnovo | Tʺrnovo |
| Щастлив | Shtastliv | Štastliv | Ŝastliv |
| Юрий | Yuriy | Jurij | Ûrij |
| Царево | Tsarevo | Carevo | Carevo |
| София | Sofia | Sofija | Sofiâ |
The last row shows the -ия rule: the official system gives Sofia, while ISO 9 and scientific systems keep a letter for я.
Which Cyrillic to Latin system should you use?
- Names, addresses, travel, forms: the Streamlined System. It matches Bulgarian passports and road signs.
- Library catalogs and data you must convert back: ISO 9, or the cataloging standard your library already uses.
- Linguistics papers: the scientific system, if your journal expects it.
- Chat and texting: nothing official. Bulgarians writing informally in Latin letters (called shlyokavitsa) mix spellings freely, sometimes using digits such as 4 for ч and 6 for ш.
If you only need to read Bulgarian, transliteration is a stepping stone. Learning the Bulgarian letters directly is faster than it sounds; our step-by-step plan gets most people reading signs within a few days.
Latin to Cyrillic: the reverse direction
Cyrillic to Latin is the easy direction. Converting Latin back to Cyrillic is harder. With Streamlined text, a might be а or ъ, and sht might be щ or ш plus т. The converter’s Latin-to-Cyrillic mode makes a phonetic best guess, which works well for most words but should be checked by eye. For writing a foreign name in Bulgarian, the rule is to follow the sound, not the spelling; see your name in Bulgarian.
If you want to type Cyrillic yourself instead of converting, an on-screen Cyrillic keyboard lets you type Bulgarian letters with a normal Latin keyboard.
Common mistakes
- Using a Russian converter for Bulgarian. You will get shch for щ and lose ъ entirely. Bulgarian щ is sht.
- Mixing systems in one document. Tărnovo next to Kardzhali looks careless. Pick one system and stick to it.
- Expecting the official form to be reversible. It is not; keep the Cyrillic original if you need it later.
- Dropping diacritics from ISO 9. Sofia written as ISO 9 without the circumflex is neither ISO 9 nor the official form.
- Leaving hidden Cyrillic letters. Cyrillic а, е, о, р, с, х look identical to Latin letters. Text that mixes them can fail search and spell-check.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert Cyrillic to Latin for Bulgarian?
Paste the text into the converter and it applies the official Streamlined System. Ж becomes zh, щ becomes sht, ъ becomes a, and word-final -ия becomes -ia.
Is ISO 9 used in Bulgaria?
Not for official documents. Bulgaria uses the Streamlined System by law; ISO 9 appears mainly in libraries and data systems that need a reversible conversion.
Is Bulgarian Cyrillic to Latin the same as Russian?
No. The letters overlap, but the values differ: Bulgarian щ is sht and ъ is a vowel written a, while Russian щ is shch and ъ is a silent hard sign.
Why does Търново have so many Latin spellings?
Older systems wrote ъ as u, ŭ or ă, giving Turnovo or Tărnovo. The official spelling today is Tarnovo.
Can Latin text be converted back to Cyrillic?
Only approximately with the official system, because a and y each stand for two Cyrillic letters. ISO 9 is fully reversible.
Sources
- Romanization System in Bulgaria (UN conference paper, 2012)
- Romanization of Bulgarian, BGN/PCGN 2013 (UK government)
- Ivanov, Skordev, Dobrev: The New National Standard for the Romanization of Bulgarian (Sofia University)
- Romanization of Bulgarian (Wikipedia)